NDP scores more votes than all rivals combined
By Geremy Bordonaro
Jessica Bell of the New Democratic Party (NDP) is the first ever Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the newly formed riding of University-Rosedale. The riding, which encompasses the northern half of what was once Trinity-Spadina, includes all of the Annex.
The 2018 Ontario provincial election marks a definitive shift in the politics of the city and province as Doug Ford’s Ontario Progressive Conservatives (PC) gained a majority government with 76 seats. Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, formerly a majority government, lost their status as a party after taking only seven seats, even though Wynne managed to hold on to her riding of Don Valley West.
Jessica Bell said she was “humbled but proud” to represent the Annex, and spoke about how much this meant to her.
“The very next day I had to start working. I walked up the steps of Queen’s Park and it felt very historic,” Bell said. “I’m going to remember that moment for the rest of my life.”
Bell received an incredibly strong 24,537 votes, nearly half of the riding’s voter turnout.
She won more votes than the Liberal, PC, and Green party candidates combined and more than twice as many votes as the runner-up.
The runner-up, Jo-Ann Davis, from the Liberal Party, got 10,898 votes, with 22 per cent of the vote, and was closely followed by Gillian Smith from the PC Party with 10,431 votes at 21 per cent. Tim Grant, representative of the Green Party, ended up with 2,652 votes, at 5 per cent.
Bell is part of a strong NDP contingent from Toronto. Most of the city’s ridings flipped from Liberal to NDP with the NDP taking two incumbent seats in Toronto-Danforth and Parkdale-High Park.
“This election was very clearly a change election,” she said. “People in Toronto did not want Doug Ford and the budget cuts that the Conservatives typically do. They overwhelmingly voted for change.”
The story in Etobicoke, Scarborough, and parts of North York is very different. In these ridings, outside of the city’s core, the PC party took hold. Prior to this election there were no Conservatives holding a seat within Toronto, yet 11 seats flipped from Liberal to PC.
In the small amount of time since the election the premier-elect has already signalled he will axe the Green Ontario Fund, which according to Gus Sinclair, former Chair of the Harbord Village Residents’ Association, has already had an effect on the community.
“The HVRA prides itself on trying to be the greenest community in Toronto,” Sinclair said. “We used that money to subsidize energy audits for people’s houses. “Now people are like ‘well geez, what do I do?’ That kind of initiative I think is essential if we believe global warming is a problem.”
Sinclair is waiting for whatever changes come in the future but is not exactly optimistic.
“I don’t know what else he is going to do. People wanted change. Change is what they’re going to get,” said Sinclair. “They may not like the change they get.”
Three of the seven remaining Liberal party strongholds are in Toronto. The ridings of Don Valley West and East, with the addition of Scarborough-Guildwood, all remained Liberal despite the party’s overall unpopularity.
READ MORE ON THE ELECTION:
ON THE COVER: The Ballot Bunch (Election Special 2018)
NEWS: Grilling potential MPPs (Election Special 2018)
EDITORIAL: The market has no moral compass (Election Special 2018)
GREENINGS: Choosing the lesser evil (Election Special 2018)
FORUM: Bold new initiatives for Ontario (Election Special 2018)
FORUM: Reducing downtown’s vehicles by 25 per cent (May 2018)
FORUM: What kind of Ontario do we want? (May 2018)
FORUM: What kind of province do we want? (March 2018)